Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Cellular telephone systems are typically pushed to their capacity limits. “Hotspots” (overcrowded cell sites) occur frequently and are difficult to mitigate because they are transient. For example, a downtown area may be a hotspot on a Monday morning, but on a Sunday afternoon the hotspot may be near the little league baseball fields. Subdividing the hotspot and routing traffic to multiple neighboring sites is one approach to increase capacity. However, this is an expensive option, as it leaves any cells that are not currently hotspots with lots of expensive extra capability. Also, much of the challenge with hotspots has to do with providing wireless service to end user equipment (EUs) on the edge of the “hot” cell site due to interference so making all the towers stronger only raises potential interference magnitude.
One approach to meet demand within commercially reasonable budgets is to use relays to relay wireless traffic out of hotspots into neighboring cells or to relay edge traffic closer in to a servicing base station. Traditionally, relays have been fairly simple analog “receive and amplify” devices, which receive a signal and transmit it on to a base station. More sophisticated relays may perform error correction, decoding, or other services traditionally provided by the base station. Some standards such as the latest revision of the mobile network standard LTE (Long Term Evolution) has built-in definitions that allow even relatively simple mobile devices to serve as forwarding relays. Relays, however, often operate at lower power than base stations, have less sophisticated antennas, and/or have a less advantageous vantage relative to the surrounding terrain.
The present disclosure appreciates that there are several limitations with current cellular network technologies. For example, relays are more likely to be subject to interference from neighboring base stations. Thus, attempts to reduce interference experienced by relays by trying to use more power may not be an optimal approach for cellular networks.